The New Old Age
I am looking at the contents
of my coat pocket:
a train ticket, a pencil
plucked from the playground,
a receipt for a steak pie
and large glass
of Sauvignon blanc,
and I think I should put
these on a shelf as symbols
of a lost and easy age
of innocence.
It is enough almost
to make you weep
this sacred detritus,
rubbish pregnant now
with such meaning.
When we emerge
blinking into the future
with our long hair,
our chipped teeth,
our bandaged specs,
will those months
of self help, yoga,
soda bread and scrabble
swell our brains
to the size of a new world?
Will poetry have seen us through?
I don’t know. I think, jealous
of their high fiving freedom
through our long days
of want and envy
we will swarm out to find a rook
to strangle while nature
scatters with a collective sigh
of here’s this lot on the piss again.
Hugh McMillan is a poet from Dumfries and Galloway. His last collection The Conversation of Sheep (Luath) was hailed in Scottish Farmer as the best poetry collection ever about the conversation of sheep. He is currently curating a video blog of Scottish poets in lockdown at
https://pestilencepoems.blogspot.com/?m=1
Yes, pessimistic… and realistic. It will take more than the raising of the Siege to save the planet
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